This is getting a bit far from shore, but the list owner goes along with
it. I don’t know what sizes of coal were used aboard ship, but I remember
watching steam locomotives being fired. The coal appeared to be lumps
averaging about 6 inches across, much the same sort as we burned in open
fires in England. One of the stoker’s tasks was to reach in with an iron
tool and break up the partially-burned lumps and clinker. When automatic
stokers appeared on locomotives in America, the screw of the stoker broke
up the lumps into smaller ones that were delivered onto a firing platform,
from which they were shot into the appropriate locations of the grate by
blasts of steam.

When I was 7 and 8, I lived in a house (#7, Longton Ave, Upper Sydenham)
that had a glass conservatory across its entire back, in which a fomer
resident had grown orchids. That had been heated in the past by a
coal-fired boiler plant, fed by coal along an underground passage that led
to a coal hatch (cast iron manhole cover) out near the street. Naturally,
that establishment became the engine and boiler rooms of the ship in which
we made imaginary voyages.

John Forester 408-734-9426
forester@johnforester.com 726 Madrone Ave
http://www.johnforester.com Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3041